Creating costumes for Cher’s big Vegas show has got to be one of the most daunting tasks for any designer.

But for the man who has been outfitting this diva among divas since the “Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour” went on the air in 1971, it’s a never-ending hoot.

“She doesn’t want to wear a T-shirt and jeans or a simple slip dress. She wants the whole works, and people love that about her,” says Bob Mackie, the 68-year-old costume designer known as the “Sultan of Sequins” and “Raja of Rhinestones,” from his Studio City-based Elizabeth Courtney Costumes shop, where he is fixing up more than a dozen costumes for his muse.

From Cher to Carol Burnett, Mackie is a master when it comes to wildly imaginative, show-stopping frocks that play on the absurd. Remember the “Gone With the Wind” sketch on “The Carol Burnett Show” in which the star descends the staircase in a green velvet drapery dress with the rods still in it?

“He obviously has fun with what he does, and he brings that fun to his clothes,” says Kevin Jones, curator for the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum in Los Angeles. “He seems to be perpetually excited about his craft and yet he has been at this for 40 years now. It’s a catching kind of enthusiasm.”

So catching, in fact, the iconic costume designer is being honored with the inaugural Fashion Arts Charlie Award by the Hollywood Arts Council.

“It’s been that whoever the first recipient of an award is sets the tone, and moving into the area of fashion … there’s just one name that is synonymous with Hollywood, and not just as a costume designer but really a fashion designer, where his name has gone beyond the industry,” says Nyla Arslanian, president of the Hollywood Arts Council. “And that’s Bob Mackie.”

Presenting the award to Mackie will be actress Mitzi Gaynor, another in the plethora of Hollywood celebrities the nine-time Emmy-winning and three-time Oscar-nominated designer has garnished with sequins, rhinestones and translucent panels, to say the least.

Mackie is renowned for bringing the tradition of Old Hollywood designers to his work. As a boy, the L.A. native remembers the fascination he had for “the Technicolor beauty” of 1940s and ’50s cinema.

“The people in those movies didn’t look like the people at home,” he says. “We didn’t have all that incredible color around us, and so I just wanted to be part of that.”

After graduating from Rosemead High School, Mackie studied advertising and illustration at Pasadena City College and then costume design at Chouinard Art Institute, which later became CalArts. From there, he went to work at Paramount Pictures, by a stroke of luck.

“Somebody was sick and someone else was out of town, and they needed a sketch artist, so there I was, fresh out of school,” he says.

He would work under film designer Jean Louis before happily finding himself in “the closest thing to movie musicals,” the world of television variety, where his career would take off.

And take off it has.

He’s since designed outfits for icons ranging from everyone Carol Channing, to Diana Ross, to the Barbie doll, although he admits he needed some convincing on the last one.

“As long as it could be kitschy,” he says. “A lot of people do fashion on (Barbie) and that’s fine too. I always just did fantasy showgirl kinds of things because that’s what they wanted from me.”

The same request has come from real-life clients such as Elton John, whom Mackie first met while doing a Cher TV special back in the ’70s.

After the show, Mackie says, John asked if he could design some outfits for him “like you do for Cher.”

So, what does he have in the works for Cher’s Las Vegas show when it opens May 6?

Mackie chuckles.

“You’ll see some nostalgia looks that she’s worn before because she’s doing those same songs, and there’s some incredible new kinds of things as well,” he says. “People are going to love it because the show is spectacular.”

Los Angeles Daily News reporter Sandra Barrera has been writing about entertainment and lifestyle topics since 1998. Before joining the Daily News in 2000, she was a reporter for the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in Ontario where she helped launch the now-defunct entertainment magazine 72HOURS as its music writer. Her reporting career at the Daily News has included fashion coverage from the red carpet at Hollywood's biggest awards shows, home and garden trends with a particular focus on earth-friendly alternatives and a wide range of events, from theater to the latest happenings at Six Flags Magic Mountain.